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Enterprises are increasingly turning to the cloud to support their digital transformation projects to innovate and stay ahead of the competition. According to analyst firm IDC, worldwide spending on public cloud services and infrastructure is expected to reach US$160 billion this year and increase to $277 billion in 2021.
Age of digital transformation
The appeal of the cloud is easy to understand, and ranges from its cost-effectiveness, inherent scalability, and its sheer breadth of functionality. But as enterprises move their workloads to public cloud platforms, many are running into network-related performance issues, particularly in cross-border scenarios or when a single cloud zone is used to serve multiple countries.
To address this, some are turning to alternative connectivity options other than the unreliable and congestion-prone public internet. And this trend is rising, with Gartner predicting that more than 30 percent of organizations connecting to cloud providers will use alternatives to the public internet by 2020 – a significant increase from the mere 5 percent in 2017.
Yet the cost of traditional private connectivity options such as MPLS or IPLC can be high, negating their use in all but the most mission-critical scenarios. Even if cost is not a concern, it can be challenging for a growing enterprise to manage multiple overseas vendors with different billing cycles and currencies. Finally, there is also the long lead times for provisioning and rigid contract terms with no flexibility to change the bandwidth as required.
The situation is further complicated with the growing need for hybrid cloud deployments that necessitate additional connections between colocation facilities and overseas branch offices. A flexible and cost-effective connectivity solution is clearly needed to support modern enterprises today – one that offers greater deployment agility and management convenience.
Delivering business agility
China Mobile International (CMI) launched the CMI Cloud Connect and CMI SD-WAN solutions to meet the evolving needs of enterprises. Created to offer enterprises the agility they need for successful digital transformation, the new connectivity options are designed to give businesses the support they need for rapid growth and expansion across public cloud platforms and around the world.
- CMI Cloud Connect offers a private route from on-premises deployments and private data centers to public cloud platforms. The top public cloud and various colocation facilities within China and outside are supported and can be managed through a single point of contact. Built on China Mobile International’s global network infrastructure for high-quality connectivity services with guaranteed service level agreement (SLA) and burstable bandwidth option, Cloud Connect can be provisioned as quickly as a week.
- CMI SD-WAN helps enterprises seamlessly interconnect corporate offices, branch outlets and factories. Powered by software-defined networking (SDN) technology with cloud-based centralized management, the service offers superior connection quality and reliability that is more cost-effectiveness than MPLS. For rapid provisioning, the SD-WAN edge appliance can be delivered to 20 regions and supports a range of WAN connectivity options such as MPLS VPN, broadband internet, and 4G LTE for redundancy or load balancing.
In addition, the CMI centralized management portal serves as a single interface for customers to manage network services such as Cloud Connect and SD-WAN. It also works with major public cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud and Huawei Cloud, and functions as a consolidated billing and monitoring service for tracking usage and to quickly identify service faults.
The route to success
Enterprises are already using solutions from CMI to support their networking requirements to the various public cloud platforms and corporate branches around the world. Freed from being held back by poor and unreliability connectivity, they can now focus on their core business competencies and digital transformation initiatives.
For example, one China-based organization known for its expertise in unmanned aerial vehicles and flight imaging systems faced connectivity issues between their cloud deployments in AWS Beijing and AWS oversea regions. With CMI Cloud Connect, they successfully overcame the challenge of high packet loss and frequent faults, while simultaneously benefitting from CMI’s dual path cross-border connectivity between Hong Kong and the Mainland.
Another customer from the retail sector in Singapore had seven locations in the Asia Pacific that require high availability connectivity with the option of burstable bandwidth. As MPLS offers fixed bandwidth, the customer eventually opted CMI SD-WAN for its flexibility bandwidth support and ability to work with multiple WAN options including MPLS and the public internet for reliability.
Customers choose CMI for our unique solution that complies fully with the latest regulations in China, and our cloud neutral approach that puts customer requirements first. With 138 points of presence (PoPs), CMI delivers robust connectivity with 99.99% reliability around the globe. CMI also offers local professional support and managed services through highly-qualified local teams or partners, delivering a one-stop service with precisely tailored solutions to meet customer requirements.
CTA: Contact CMI today to learn about how our solutions can address your cloud connectivity challenges and help your enterprise reach new heights. You can reach us at http://www.cmi.chinamobile.com or mailto:info@cmi.chinamobile.com